At the end of year 11, choosing your HSC subjects can be extremely daunting. Even more daunting can be the choice of extension 2 maths for extension 1 students. E2 maths is considered the most challenging HSC subject available, requiring hours of dedication a week. Even though a third of my classes were dedicated to maths during my HSC, I am incredibly grateful that I chose it in the end.

If you are even relatively comfortable in E1 maths, I would strongly recommend picking up E2 in year 12. While extension 1 is already one of the best scaling subjects, extension 2 has the highest scaling out of any subject. While scaling should not be the sole reason to pick a subject, if you enjoy maths and are comfortable with it, i’d highly recommend. A raw mark of 60-65% can scale to over a 99 ATAR contribution, making it incredibly useful for a high ATAR to get into those difficult uni courses.

Although E2 does not come without its difficulties. It requires you to be on top of your work, studying nearly everyday, and understanding new and difficult concepts. It encourages you to creatively approach unfamiliar questions, occasionally using techniques from multiple topics you’ll learn (vectors, complex numbers, proof, mechanics) in the same question. You may even be entering the HSC not knowing how to do half the questions. Regardless though, the payoff is amazing.

Aside from the HSC mark, E2 maths is great to prepare you for tertiary studies, especially degrees in engineering, physics, maths, computer science, data science etc. Many topics in E2 appear in the first year of these degrees, giving you a great foundation for the remainder of the course. It also forces you to develop your resiliance, logical skills, critical thinking skills and more. For students questions whether extension 2 maths is worth picking or not, do it!

James Xylas